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Sunday, February 03, 2013

Mobile Customer Service Means More Than Multi-channel Connections

It’s
bad enough that “unified communications” (UC) is still a confusing term
for many people, but I am now seeing “multi-channel” customer service also
adding to the confusion by some industry analysts describing “mobility” as a
“channel” or ignoring “cloud” services as a practical means of implementing
customer interactions. Another source of confusion comes from pundits not
differentiating access to self-service business applications with communication
applications for contacts with people. The communication applications are
really “self-service,” too, since customers don’t need someone to initiate a
phone call, send an email, post a social comment, or start an IM chat. That’s
where UC enablement provides simplified interoperability between the two types
of applications.

While
there are different modes of contact with people and interactions with
self-service applications available to mobile consumers who have smartphones
and tablets, each mode is a different “channel” from the user interface and
endpoint device perspective. The fact that the network connection (wired,
wireless) is the same or different for any type of interaction makes little
difference to the user experience (unless it is too slow!).

How Remote Customer Service Is Changing

Customer
service is changing dramatically as consumers become more mobile and thus
become both more contact accessible as well as have greater direct access to
online information and services. Organizations, whether large enterprises or
small businesses, will all be affected by the impact of multi-modal smartphones
and tablets on traditional telephone-based customer interactions.

As
confirmed in many recent market
studies, mobile customers are now expecting:

·More access to mobile
online self-services

·Pro-active mobile
notifications and alerts, rather than calling in or checking online

·Greater flexibility in
choice of user interfaces (voice, visual)

·Options for multiple
forms of “smart” access to live assistance when needed

The
contact center of yesterday must start planning now to accommodate the new
technologies that support such interactions for both mobile customers and
customer assistance staff, wherever they may be located. Migrating contact
center applications for mobile customers will be most cost-efficiently
facilitated by moving to “cloud”
based hosted and managed services, but “Customer BYOD” needs will also
require self-service applications to be redesigned for device-independence and
offer more flexible choices for user interaction interfaces.

Telephone
calls are not going to disappear, but the traditional need for voice
conversations is being subsumed by other forms of inbound and outbound
contacts, including social network postings, text chat, and video calls. As
reflected in a recent market study, customers prefer interacting with online
applications first, before requiring access to live assistance.

Customer
Service Experience Is Becoming More Critical For Business Performance

Providing
good customer experiences will be key to customer support, satisfaction, and
retention. As applied to self-service applications, it will make a big
difference in handling increased mobile consumer needs by minimizing the need
for live assistance. So, a unified view of all customer contact activities will
be needed in designing both personalized self- service applications and
providing live assistance on demand. This is where the benefits of “cloud”
based applications and contextual data storage will cost-efficiently support
the dynamic needs of multi-modal customer service management.